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Monday, January 30, 2017

How to Get Access to Any File on a Remote Computer with OneDrive

Want to get access to a file on a remote computer? Do you know that with OneDrive fetch feature you can easily have access to any file on a remote computer?OneDrive has a hidden setting know Remote file access that you could use to save yourself hassle if accessing files on remote computers. With the "fetch" feature on OneDrive, you can remotely get access to any file on your computer even though the files isn’t stored in the OneDrive folder. However, like I said before it is a hidden feature, so you’ll need to turn the feature on. The feature is usually disabled by default. Fortunately, the process is extremely easy compared to using Plex or other Media Server to access files remotely. So here's how to enable the fetching feature and how to use it.The fetch feature will always be useful whenever you have important files stored elsewhere on your computer, a remote computer, or even on external or mapped drives. The PC you want to access its file must be turned on always, connected to the internet, and also have OneDrive installed and working in other to make this work. After enabling the OneDrive fetching feature, you can easily access files on another computer by just opening your web browser and logging into your OneDrive account.How to enable and set Up Fetch in OneDriveThe first thing to do here is to enable the Fecth feature. Click on the up arrow tray icon in the taskbar located at the bottom-right of the screen. Right click on the OneDrive icon in the system tray and click on Settings.Check the checkbox beside the "Let me use OneDrive to fetch any of my files on this PC", which is usually unchecked by default.Then click on OK.Then we need to restart OneDrive in order to complete the process. So right click on the OneDrive icon in the system tray and click on Exit. Then open the OneDrive. You can do that by search for it in the start menu and click OneDrive to open the OneDrive folder or press the Windows + R keys and type in “onedrive’ and press enter.How to Use “Fetch” to Get Access to Files with OneDriveThe next thing now is to know how to get access to files remote with the fetch feature. Open your web from the computer that needs to access the remote file. Then browser head over to https://onedrive.live.com/ and login with your OneDrive account.Then click on the settings menu icon (hamburger) at the top left then on PCs.Click on “PC” to open a list of available computers and then select the computer you want to access. The computers listed here are ones connected to your OneDrive account.Then follow the steps to sign in with a security code that is if this is your first time connecting to that computer from this PC. Now you can get a security code by text message or email to confirm your identity depending on how you set your Microsoft account settings.Then from there you can surf through and access all the files on the connected PC, which includes the ones that are not in your OneDrive. Then you can head over to the file you want to access.This feature works on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10; however it does not on Windows 8.1. Sadly, you can't use OneDrive to fetch files on a Windows 8.1 PC; however you can use Windows 8.1 to fetch files on another PC.